Comment # 8 on bug 1203027 from Ancor Gonzalez Sosa

BEWARE: philosophical conversation/digression ahead (not really useful to get
the main issue addressed).

(In reply to Richard Brown from comment #6)
> 
> Isn't that why the Installation Summary screen lets you review everything
> YaST is doing before the install starts?

Mostly true. The "everything" word is the only part that is a bit over the top.
;-) YaST cannot do everything that is technically possible in the system.

As you mention, the user can always jump to the corresponding screen to correct
unwanted decisions made by the automatic proposals... But, of course, the user
can only modify those things that are supported by YaST. Whatever is not
supported by YaST, falls out of that "everything". ;-)

Several examples: YaST doesn't have the ability to configure LUKS2 unlocking
via TPM2, YaST doesn't have the ability to define several mount points for the
same block device, YaST doesn't have the ability to configure LVM cache (only
bcache is supported) and YaST doesn't have the ability to define a subvolume
whose mount point is not below the mount point of its corresponding Btrfs
file-system.

So there is no screen where the user can jump to "correct" those aspects of the
proposal... because YaST can't simply do those things.

In the TPM2 example, is not that YaST decided to use a password instead of TPM2
for LUKS2 unlocking. It's simply that using a passphrase is the only way YaST
knows. So the user cannot "correct" the proposal to use a different unlocking
mechanism, even if that is something that can perfectly be done manually. We
are not talking about the automatic proposal choosing the wrong option, we are
talking about YaST limitations and lack of features. 

In the same way, subvolumes in YaST have been historically limited to just be
mounted below its file-system according to the path of the subvolume (so they
are treated as subdirectories on steroids). It has been like that since Btrfs
was introduced in the distribution. YaST has never offered the possibility to
adjust the mount point or the mount options of a subvolume in a completely
independent and arbitrary way. Cannot be done with the Expert Partitioner,
cannot be done with AutoYaST, cannot be configured in the control file and, of
course, the installer cannot propose it automatically.

> The fact that YaST is auto-calculating mount points for subvolumes and not
> giving users a chance to correct any mistakes and/or set mount points for
> any additional subvolumes sure still feels like a bug to me that runs
> counter to how we typically do everything else in YaST...

I disagree with reasoning done to get to the idea that the current subvolume
handling goes counter to how we do things in YaST (already explained). Having
said that, I don't think it makes a big difference calling it a bug or a (lack
of) feature. That doesn't change the fact that allowing totally arbitrary mount
points (and mount options) per subvolume implies changing the whole historical
approach of YaST to subvolumes. That means deep changes would be needed in
YaST. Changes in the user interface, changes in the AutoYaST schema and, of
course, internal changes.

We really want to improve that part, but sadly we have not found time in the
last couple of years because the people who sets the priorities always had
something more pressuring.